A Look At MS's MA Talking Points

tbray writes "It may not be a Halloween Document, but one of the lobby groups in the thick of the Massachusetts office-doc standardization fray passed me 'The Other Side's Talking Points', so I've published (and slightly deconstructed) them with a barnyard-animal picture." From the article: "The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."

Comments

Gee, MS Hypocrites?

[Rick Zeman]

unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products

Somehow they never seem to object when, say, the Feds sole-source Microsoft products. Big surprise.
Let's hope someone throws that back into their faces....

Re:Gee, MS Hypocrites?

[strcmp]

Maybe someone should remind Microsoft that they sponsored the development of OpenDocument.

Re:Gee, MS Hypocrites?

[Spoing]

It's a vendor's perogative to complain about anything. Any company would want sole-source contracts with anybody, not just Microsoft. Is it somehow better if Oracle was the one doing it? How about the small software shop down the street?

Nobody complains about TCP/IP being vendor specific. OpenDocument falls in this category. Word DOC and Excel XLS files do not.

Omission?

[theRhinoceros]

There are less costly, less limiting, non-preferential policy options to achieve the same goals.

However, Microsoft is as unsure as you what these options are; they certainly aren't their products.

narrow? preferential?

[soma_0806]

The fact is that choosing ANY file type narrows the field somewhat and whatever type is selected will give preference to someone. It makes the most sense to pick the type that does the least amount of "damage" in both fields.

Using an "open" format allows the docs to be read by users of pretty much any OS. Also, it gives preference to the open source community, not some corporation looking for nothing beyond profit. Finally, anyone that wants OpenOffice can get it, and for free. No other possiblity would be less narrow or preferential!

Re:narrow? preferential?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Not only that, but Microsoft (or any vendor) are completely free (speech and beer) to implement the doctype that MA selected. MS's idea of an "open" proposal was patent encumbered and not GPL compatible.

Re:narrow? preferential?

[T-Ranger]

The idea of an "open" format isn't that it will get preference to the OSS community. It is that it will give preference to no one.

The standard in question isnt the "Open Office" format, its "OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications". OO.o 2.0 happens to support that format nativly.

Anyone, including Microsoft, is free to implement the Open Document format.

Re:narrow? preferential?

[Lehk228]

creating a filter so word can natively open OASIS docs should not take microsoft more than a week or two, but doing so would make it easier for companies to switch away from MS so it is unlikely to happen.

IIRC the patents related to PDF's are not in the document formats themselves but rather in variour protection techniques and DRM which are optional comnponents rarely used excepf for things like downloadable ebooks etc.

Re:narrow? preferential?

[hey!]

Using an "open" format allows the docs to be read by users of pretty much any OS. Also, it gives preference to the open source community, not some corporation looking for nothing beyond profit. Finally, anyone that wants OpenOffice can get it, and for free. No other possiblity would be less narrow or preferential!

Yes, well, the talking point in question is what Mr. Orwell dubbed "Doublespeak". War is peace, fredom is slavery, and a one vendor, secret file format promotes "choice". What's frightening is how often it works.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Employees themselves are saying that open office formats (at least partially, or for old versions) are a good thing. Others are saying they want to quit soon. Note that this open revolt against their management is being spearheaded by the mysterious Mini-Microsoft.

Will these attitudes finally change MSFT from the bottom up, or just get these guys fired? I suspect the latter, but hey, we live in interesting times...

duh

[gyratedotorg]

"limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others."

prohibits others? i know this is obvious to everyone here, but the fact that the oasis format is open and fully documented invalidates this argument. there is absolutely no reason why any vendor cant implement the oasis format.

Re:duh

[rm69990]

Not only that, but a reason MS gave for not supporting the format is that it doesn't support all of the features of the MS Office XML formats. So they won't add write or read support for OpenDocument.

I find that really strange, considering MS Office currently has read and write support for plain text and rich text documents. Are they really trying to tell us that plain text documents support more features than OpenDocument documents?

I call bullshit on that statement. It is an utterly stupid reason for them to give. No one is asking Microsoft to make OpenDocument the default format for Office, but to simply support it, just like they do RTF and TXT files.

This is simply a case of Microsoft kicking and screaming and throwing a tantrum because someone is telling them to take their lockin schemes and shove it up their ass.

Tim Bray

[Bogtha]

For those of you wondering who Tim Bray is or why you should read somebody's weblog, Tim Bray co-created XML. If anybody's fit to speak authoritatively on the subject of XML formats, then it's him.

FUD, Lies, and More FUD

[Pensacola Tiger]

First, the format is called Open Document, not Open Office. Open Office is the program. Second, Massachusetts is not specifying any particular software, only that any software must read/write Open Document format. Everything, and I mean everything, that Microsoft claims in their so-called talking points is self-serving rubbish. Remember that reaching a compromise with Microsoft is like reaching a compromise with cannibals that they will only eat your right arm.

Re:FUD, Lies, and More FUD

[ScrewMaster]

My only concern is that Massachussetts is using the threat of going "open" just to extort better pricing from Microsoft. That's happened as often as not in the past few years. I just hope they're sincere.

Open Office

[superspaz]

So isn't MA supposed to be providing service to its residents. Let's face it, do you want to be the one who has to train all these government employees how to use OpenOffice.

Those the change may seem minor to the /. crowd, it is likely to gum up the works for some time in the state of MA. This doesn't even get into explaining to grandparents how to file/read state tax forms online. I think there are going to be a fair number of annoyed taxpayers.

I like open document types, but I think this is a bad way to try to handle things.

Re:Open Office

[JMZorko]

... but if it's going to hurt now, won't it hurt even _more_ later? These sorts of arguments don't make sense to me. If changes need to be made, better to make them _sooner_ and minimize the headaches, then make them _later_ and have to deal with even more pain. Anyone who has done software engineering knows that it's easier to refactor earlier than later.

So, congrats to MA for attempting to refactor, and boo / hiss to MS for trying to stop it.

Regards,

John

Re:Open Office

[Guppy06]

"Let's face it, do you want to be the one who has to train all these government employees how to use OpenOffice."

The point of the switch isn't to save money but to support the freedom of information. If commonwealth employees have to be retrained in order to ensure that commonwealth citizens will be able to have access to commonwealth-published documents without being locked into vendor-specific software (or worse, a specific version of said software), so be it.

The commonwealth is there to to serve the citizenry, not sell software from an out-of-state vendor for the sake of saving a few bucks.

Re:Open Office

[starfishsystems]

Let's face it, do you want to be the one who has to train all these government employees how to use OpenOffice.

Is that a Request for Proposal? Because sure, I'd be happy to make money training people in a technology that empowers them rather than locks them into the products of a single vendor. It's certainly no harder to develop a curriculum for OpenOffice than it is for Microsoft Office, and the benefits are much more enduring.

In fact, the Government of Ontario contacted me about just this sort of training a couple of weeks ago. Clearly, Massachusetts is not alone in taking this initiative. And as the world moves systematically toward open document formats, I expect there will be many more of these business opportunities coming.

This doesn't even get into explaining to grandparents how to file/read state tax forms online.

You mean that Massachusetts is using an online tax form that only works with proprietary software? If true, it seems pretty irresponsible to limit public access to a process which they are required by law to follow. Yes, it will definitely be an improvement to get rid of artifacts like this.

Re:Open Office

[iabervon]

MA isn't going to switch to OpenOffice unless Microsoft forces them to. If MA goes forward with their plans, MS will almost certainly add support to MS Office for OpenDocument. It's not like it's difficult; multiple people have already written MS/OpenDocument converters even without MS's internal documentation. They're only making it sound like MS Office can't support other formats now because they'd rather it didn't. Faced with people actually defecting, they'd change their story.

As for filing taxes online, you've never been able to read a MA tax form in a Microsoft format; it's all PDF, which MA intends to keep using. Filing forms online is done through one of a number of commercial services, which will deal with whatever format MA wants them in. Forms you can fill out on your computer, print out, and mail in are exclusively in PDF (because that makes the form part reliably identical regardless of where it gets printed out).

OpenDocument format

[Stevyn]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Massachusetts isn't using OpenOffice's format, it's using OpenDocument. This is an open format that OOo just happens to use as well. I understand OOo had a hand in creating it, but it's not "their" format. Here's the wiki link explaining it a little further

Open formats are available equally to all

[Anonymous Coward]

From Groklaw's article on the subject:

"Some may contend that the decision is unfairly dictating a software preference. This is entirely wrong; the guidelines make it clear that any applications need only support an open, unencumbered document format. Your guidelines do not limit any vendor's ability to compete for state business because the required open formats are available equally to all, and participation in their development is equally open to all."

Whatever....

[Anonymous Coward]

However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others.

Oh please. Am I to understand that Open Office documents are blocked by things like patents, constantly changing specifications, no interoperability between versions, and licensing fees?

Oh, wait, that's MS Office! Open office standards are open? Free for all to use, if they choose?

Wow. Go figure.

All I know is I personally don't CARE what the format is, what's underneath, just friggin' well let it work with all damned Word processors!!!

RTF, HTML, XML, whatever. JUST MAKE IT WORK!!!

Re:Well, guess what

[jhfry]

IT'S NOT OPENOFFICE.ORG'S FORMAT

It's simply an open XML format for storing data that the developers of OpenOffice.org developed and utilize. It would be simple to modify other word processing applications to use this format... or if they stick with MS (who claims an open format in the future) I'm sure OO.o will migrate to that format.

Just because they are considering moving to OO.o doesn't mean that they are giving unfair or preferential treatment to a specific vendor... you could be their vendor if you bid low enough! All they have done is researched and chose the best open format for storing thier data that has a usable application that utilizes it.

I would bet if MS moved to an open format, they would use that instead... their objective is to have readable documents in 50 years... not to get away from MS (yet).

To be fair....

[Noksagt]

Tim Bray is also an employee of Sun, the company who started OO.o. I agree with what he says & am quite sympathetic to the cause, but this is like Scoble saying MA should standardize on MS word format.

cost of mass conversion could be 10ish clicks

[totro2]

Openoffice comes with a wizard to do mass conversions. It can recursively sweep through a file structure, creating a .sxw file every time a .doc file is encountered (keeping the same name). So this strengthens the point made by the author of the article:

"Unless the cost of conversion right now is awfully damn high, this sounds like a good investment."

To find this insanely under-hyped feature:

File -> AutoPilot -> Document Converter

If your file server has enough room for a bunch of new .sxw files for every .doc file, why not give give it a test on some smaller portion of your folder tree.

Then you can all easily see how good OpenOffice is in it's conversions on your existing data RIGHT NOW, and everyone can learn firsthand how realistic a switch to OpenOffice REALLY is.

Aren't you dying to know first hand if it's actually just that easy and we can all quit theorizing about how viable this whole thing is?

Re:cost of mass conversion could be 10ish clicks

[Forbman]

#1 is almost a red herring.
Not all of the documents will be checked. The critical ones (i.e., current rules, policies, public documents) will be checked, of course.

Others that most of the users think will be tough to convert will actually convert quite well, because 99% of Word users do not use styles, really know much about using fieldcodes or embed/link to parts of other Office documents via OLE, and a few more might actually use tables meaningfully. So the big problem here then becomes how badly does OO mangle any typeface conversions w.r.t. layout-by-whitespace, especially with regards to forms.

Instead of linking to other Office docs, it's generally just easier and more meaningful to copy-and-paste the information, and it's far easier to distribute that way, because it avoids the "F9 to refresh/can't find parent document" scenario. Especially if you've got a chunk of data that you really want to span a page break (OLE link container cannot span page breaks).

The poweruser spreadsheets might also not convert well, especially if they use user-written VBA functions or add-ins. But that won't be too many XLS files, either.

The rest will be checked when they're opened or when someone tells them there is a problem with them, and at some point, old documents might even just be left as-is.

But, really, #2 is going to be a red herring anyways, because it can be of concern whenever a new version of Office is released as well.

Access databases? Well... The data should be in a server RDBMS (even if it's on a workstation) anyways. Postgres could fill in nicely. Front-end? There are ways around that (even use OO's spreadsheet to do the front-end). This is one tool that will require probably a suprising amount of developer time, but there's always just linking to the data via ODBC, and keeping the front-end part. The data should not be in MDB files, though (this is good Access design practice anyways. move data to separate MDB/RDBMS ).

Re:Well, guess what

[Anonymous Coward]

MA is using the OpenDocument format, not OpenOffice's format.

OpenDocument is not vendor-specific. Anyone can use it. The only reason MS doesn't want to support it in Word is because they know that allowing people to use a non-Word format would make it easy for people to switch away from Word.

Re:Hidden costs

[RatBastard]

I've been doing Customer Support for various sized organizations through the releases of Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP (2002) and Office 2003, and every time there is a new release there are documents that break. Excel spreadsheets and Access databases (hahahahaha!) are the worst offenders, breaking with almost every release. A lot of employee time gets eaten up fixing these corrupted files every cycle. Does MS reimburse us for the time wasted? Nope. We PAY Microsoft for the priviledge of dealing with broken documents.

Moving to an open document format would stop most of this from happenning. It would also remove the only barrier keeping WordPerfect, or the Mac or Linux, out of the office environment: document interchange.

Long Road to Openness

[Feneric]

Massachusetts has been going down this road a long time; it's not just something that appeared out of nowhere and they've already done some work weighing the various options. I don't think MS is going to be able to change things with FUD this late in the game.

It's worth noting that parts of Massachusetts have already changed over. Saugus started going this route some years ago; you can see Saugus' official response to the state's announcement or my entry in the Saugus blog discussing the same.

Saugus has been pushing free and open software since the mid to late '90s. Massachusetts developed an "open source trough" for use by all state departments a couple of years back. Switching to open formats is just a natural step along the path that Massachusetts has been heading for quite some time now.

Re:Well, guess what

[WindBourne]

In light of your sig, I would suggest not posting while drunk as well. Otherwise, you write stuff like this.

the OO format is open. MS does not document anything about their format. Neither does WP or Ami Pro. Every thing that is known about all of them, is from reverse engineering. That is not a good way to preserve data.

Someone needs to Insert the Chair-Throwing Joke

[putko]

Ballmer: Just tell me it's not Open Office. It's not Open Office, is it?

Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Yes.

(chair flies through air) CRASH....

Ballmer: I WILL KILL MOTHERFUCING OPEN OFFICE! WordPerfect tried to get me, but I fucked them one good. I will fucking kill Open Office.

Umm...

[Takumi2501]

Somebody at one of those associations knows somebody who's on a mailing list with me and thus I got these talking points; I can't say for sure who wrote them, but I can guess. Let's give them a look, then walk through point by point.

Yep, nothing like first-hand information. So now, I've read this from a guy who posted an article based on information he got from a guy on a mailing list who knows a guy... I'm confused already.

I see that Microsoft reported 7.915 billion profit on $11.013 billion in revenues for "Information Worker" products (i.e. Office).

. . .

But (see previous discussion) there will also be some pay-offs; you take the pain now or you support a 72% profit margin forever.

This is rather trivial, but I should point out that profit margin is calculated as profit/cost (cost to the producer, not the consumer). The cost to the producer (Microsoft) would be their $10.013 billion in revenues, minus their $7.915 billion profit.

This makes for a profit margin of 255%. In other words, they're getting back more than 2-1/2x what their paying in. Not a bad return on investment, if you ask me.

A modest proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't major buyers like MA just specify that all software where file portability is an issue (documents, spreadsheets, etc) save their files in a format that is a published specification that has no licensing fees for competitors???

I don't care if MS owns the spec for my document files as long as all competing products can open/save my files like they were native to that application.

IMHO portability is the most important issue here.

Re:Well, guess what

[strider44]

Huh? There are 7 programs that have implemented OD support in a stable release. Open Office is not one of them. How is this an OOo format?

And no, Microsoft is *not* moving to an open format. It is not documented and other programs can't read it without reverse engineering. That's not very good for data security or stopping vendor lock-in.

David Wheeler on Why OpenDoc Won

[Anonymous Coward]

David Wheeler on why opendoc won: link

Re:You have to wonder why they object...EEE !

[Nom du Keyboard]

Look, the OO file standard is open! Nothing is keeping MS from supporting it.

Nothing to stop them from Embrace...Extend...Extinguish either.

Re:Well, guess what

[theid0]

You might want to read that again. According to the Wiki, OO.o was in fact a participator in standardization of the specification, and both the latest 1.1rc and 2.0 beta OpenOffice releases support the format. I don't know if the stable releases support it, but if not it's only a matter of time, and government moves slow enough to wait. It helps that there are already other (stable) programs that support it, like Koffice.

I'm confused...

[Kamiza Ikioi]

"The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."

I had to re-read that line twice. I thought they were talking about Microsoft being preferential, narrow, etc, etc... not OpenOffice.

Can someone actually Orwellian-like bend their mind so that 2+2=5 for me, and explain the logic behind that statement where choosing an open standard over a closed-patented-licensed-EULA'd-sign with blood-give up your first born is a bad choice?

Or is this just what I think it is, one of Microsoft's "A Few Good Men" speeches:

"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very OS that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a keyboard and start writing code. Either way, I don't give a damn what open standards you think you are entitled to."

Think of Ballmer's furniture!

[cpu_fusion]

Every time you post an article like this, Ballmer kills a chair.

Please, think of the chairs!

Microsoft *did not* sponsor OpenDocument

[hritcu]

No they didn't. Only Sun Microsystems, IBM and Adobe Systems however did. Sponsoring OASIS is very different from sponsoring a certain TC. Why do I have repeat this every single time a new article about the OpenDocument comes along?